‘Could we not have slept in?’ Vanessa yawned and rubbed her eyes. She’d travelled over in a white top beneath a blue jacket and she wore jeans to fit in with the other more casual park visitors.
‘We need to avoid suspicion.’ replied Darnell, who had dressed equally inconspicuously in a grey jumper and jeans. Vanessa wondered how discreet they could be as an ill-fitting couple, whose age difference alone would throw a question mark on their visit. She didn’t want to be branded as a gold-digger.
‘Yeah this isn’t suspicious, tourists turning up at the crack of dawn.’
At the entrance they were met by a park ranger, Gareth Brookmyre, who offered them a tour of the grounds. The ranger’s uniform was made up of a grey short-sleeved shirt with the National Park logo on the breast, green trousers and a cream fedora hat.
‘Mr Brookmyre, thank you for seeing us so early.’ Darnell lifted his hand out and shook the ranger’s hand. They’d made arrangements to visit the site on a private tour the previous day via telephone.
‘My pleasure, Detective Jackson, I have to say I was most intrigued that you wanted to visit the park. Can I ask why a particular interest in Lincoln is integral to the case you’re working on?’
‘There’s been some vandalism at a site in Springfield and, whoever the culprit is, is trying to get us on some sort of trail of Lincoln’s life so here we are at the very beginning where he was born,’ Darnell replied, impressed by his ability to think up an excuse for their investigation on the spot. To be fair to him, Oak Ridge had been vandalised, he’d just left out the key point that the president’s body was also missing.
‘It seems very formal for a bit of vandalism if you don’t mind me saying.’
‘Well we like to protect our history, as you know. Have you or the management team seen anything suspicious over the previous days?’ Vanessa changed the subject.
‘Nothing comes to mind. You mentioned vandalism, if you were able to be more specific. I’m guessing this has to do with Oak Ridge Cemetery? I heard the old Lincoln grave has been cornered off. It caused a few raised eyebrows in Illinois, so I hear.’
‘It’s being renovated. That was just coincidental.’ Darnell excused with a firm tone. ‘Could you show us the park?’
The ranger took the detectives across the land and up to the memorial.
‘It looks similar to the Lincoln Memorial in DC,’ Vanessa said as she admired the architecture. She’d walked past the Washington building, with the statue of the former president inside, days earlier before she was assigned to the case in Illinois.
‘Ours was here first,’ Brookmyre replied with a look of disdain. He clearly wasn’t happy that people always referenced the DC memorial, but his own local cenotaph was frequently forgotten about. ‘President Roosevelt laid the first stone here in 1909. Let’s move on.’
He then walked them around the museum towards the symbolic birth cabin of President Lincoln. The log cabin was no bigger than seventeen feet and held just one room, certainly cosy for a family of four at the time Lincoln arrived.
‘Where’s the original cabin?’ Vanessa asked. ‘It says this is just a replica.’
‘Who knows? Some guy claimed he had the original logs from the cabin and built a copy of it. He used to take it on tour around the country. They tried to install it here but it was too big and we figured we can’t guarantee they had any connection to Lincoln in the first place. So we built our own which we know would have been in line with the spec of the original.’
‘It’s so tiny, I can’t believe the whole family fit in here.’ Vanessa grabbed her chest and gasped.
‘That’s the American Dream right there, isn’t it? From humble beginnings to the White House. It’s simply amazing.’ Darnell wiped a tear from his eye, turning his head away from his colleague to hide the emotion he’d managed to conceal so far from her.
‘Our visitor centre also includes artefacts, and this diagram shows Lincoln’s bloodline. I can take you around it if you’d like.’
‘We can take it from here, thank you, Mr Brookmyre. You have such clear signposting that we can work it all out.’ Vanessa smiled and nodded before moving closer to her colleague and whispered, ‘OK, less of the tourism now, we’re supposed to be finding a body.’
‘Oh before I go…’ Brookmyre returned, causing Vanessa to jump. She placed a hand over her mouth from revealing anymore in front of the ranger. ‘This arrived in the post for you yesterday. It’s for you, Detective Jackson. I was about to just send it back to the post office as I couldn’t understand why it was sent here, but then I got your call and figured I could hand it to you while you were over here.’
The ranger handed Darnell an envelope which was indeed addressed to him. Darnell pulled two latex gloves out of his pocket and took the envelope before carefully tearing the seal open. In the corner it had an Illinois Statehood stamp, which was a blue and yellow outline of the state with its name across the bottom, and the year of its foundation: 1818.
He lifted out the letter once he was out of view of the prying eyes of the ranger. At the top of the white paper, he found the same symbol which they found in both
